How is ice a black body/almost a back body?

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SUMMARY

Ice and snow are classified as nearly black bodies due to their high absorptivity in the infrared spectrum, particularly between 1-3 microns. While ice appears white and reflects visible light, it absorbs infrared radiation effectively, behaving like a black body in that specific range. The discussion highlights that a true black body has an absorptivity and emissivity of 1 and reflectivity of 0 across all wavelengths, but ice and snow can mimic this behavior in the infrared spectrum.

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I read somewhere that ice and snow are almost black bodies but the reason wasn't given.
But how can it be? Ice appears white...so it reflects most light incident on it, then how it can be even almost a black body? <:|
 
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Snow is (nearly) perfectly absorptive in the infrared.

http://www.civil.utah.edu/~cv5450/Remote/AVIRIS/optics.html

So at near infrared wavelengths (call it 1-3 microns) snow acts like a blackbody. Not sure about the MWIR (3-5 microns) and LWIR (8-12 microns) wavebands.
 
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thnx
 
You are right! A black body must, in theory, appear black to the eye. If the radiation of interest is limited to a particular range, say infrared, then the surface could be said to behave like a blackbody in this band. But strictly speaking, a blackbody has an absorptivity and emissivity of 1, and a reflectivity of 0 for all electromagnetic radiation.
 

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